“Seed from the East” – A Trip to the Homeland (Part 2)

Connecting with Molly Holt in Il San, Korea, peaked my interest in the Holt story. I sent her a YouTube link of a 3-minute movie I made titled, "1963_Korea_Trip." It's the trip my parents made to Korea in 1963. I took twenty minutes of 8mm footage and shaved it down to three minutes, leaving just images of my mother and me. Molly said she was nineteen years old then and would have been in Il San at the time. Her mother, Bertha Holt, was on the same flight as my parents.

This past month, pulling together still photos and 8mm footage of the trip to Korea in 1963, along with organizing all the paperwork my parents had on file from my adoption, has been an interesting journey to my past. I just finished reading “Seed from the East,” by Bertha Holt, written in 1956, five years after Harry Holt’s trip to Korea to adopt eight Amerasian children.

The Holts, Harry and Bertha, already had six children ranging from twenty-two to nine years old. They were farmers in rural Oregon. Practicing Christians they sponsored thirteen children after attending a film presentation about the plight of Korean war orphans. Over time, they decided they would adopt. How or how many was unknown at time.

Harry departed for Korea on May 30, 1951—Memorial Day weekend. He didn’t know when he’d return. In order to adopt more than two children from another country, the Holts needed the law to change. He initiated the process by persuading one of Oregon’s senators, Richard Neuberger, to sponsor a bill permitting a larger number of children to be adopted. He did. First, Senate Bill Number S.2312, “A Bill for Relief of Certain Korean War Orphans,” had to pass the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senate Immigration committee and the Senate itself. Once passed, Holt Bill HR 7043, moved through the House of Representatives in a similar fashion before being signed by the president. It didn’t happen overnight.

To complicate matters, in Korea, Harry didn’t have access to phones; it was 1951, in a war torn country. Some days there wasn’t electricity. He wrote home to Oregon on a regular basis but news (good and bad) was delayed. Visas for the children took a month to arrive by boat. (Whereas, if it had been by mail, it would have taken a week.) Illness was prevalent. Some of the children chosen died or were too ill to travel. Each child had to pass a physical in time for the trip to the States.

Harry was in Korea until October 14. It took three days to fly the children home, stopping each day in Japan, Hawaii, and Oregon. The Holt adoption story received national coverage in both Korea and America. Letters about the adopting mixed-race children oversees prompted the writing of “The Seed from the East.”

In 1961, a letter addressed to my parents, written on October 4, from Holt Adoption Program, stated that I was nine months old. On August 31, someone brought me to the orphanage from the Seoul City Hall where I had been abandoned.